Team

Mike Gioioso

Mike Gioioso (joy-OH-so) grew up in Baltimore in a large family of entrepreneurs. Following his graduation from Mount St. Mary’s University, Mike was selected by the Baltimore Orioles in the Major League Baseball amateur draft and he played three years professionally.

He began his career in commercial real estate in 2009 in leasing and property management for Mid-Atlantic Properties, a prominent office landlord with a portfolio of more than a million square feet of class A and B buildings.

In 2012, Mike joined MacKenzie Commercial, one of the Mid-Atlantic’s top full-service commercial real estate services firms, where he served as a Vice President in the Brokerage division for the next decade. At MacKenzie, Mike represented some of the region’s most prominent retail landlords including Bozzuto Management, Warhorse Cities, PMC Properties, 28 Walker Development and Mars Supermarkets, along with a Tenant Roster including Crunch Fitness, Sola Salons, Pet Supplies Plus, Dunkin brands, Taco Bell (Aarsand Mgmt), Popeyes (Parikh Network), CVS (JC Barr properties) and WaWa Gas Stations (Ferber Group Inc).

Mike is at heart an entrepreneur and has parlayed his market knowledge and industry skill set into a few successful Food and Beverage business ventures with clients. In 2015 he rallied a group of investors behind prominent restaurant personality Gino Cardinale in the purchase of
https://www.tarksgrill.com/ a 350 seat upscale full-service restaurant in Lutherville, MD. Tarks remains to this day a perennial “Best of Baltimore” award winner and falls within the top 2% of gross sales for restaurants in all of Baltimore County. In 2016 he opened https://cypriana.com/ a 175 seat full service restaurant in Baltimore’s affluent Roland Park neighborhood, later selling his interest back to the operating partners. In 2017, Mike bought interest in Plantbar, then a 1-unit juice and smoothie cafe, and over the next 3 years, expanded the brand with his operating partner Daniela Troia to a total of 5 units and a juice truck. The pair sold the brand to Washington DC- based KoldKiss Brands Inc. in late 2021. Also in 2017, he invested with clients Scott Donnelly (Little Havana’s and Poole Island Brewery) and James Clark (Clark Burger) in the creation of https://www.thepizzatrust.com artisan quick-fire
pizza the top-grossing tenant inside of the regionally famous Belvedere Square Market Food Hall.

Mike is a member of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) and Urban Land Institute (ULI). He was instrumental in the formation and twice chaired the Next Generation Committee of the Retail Brokers Network (RBN) a strategic resource partnership between 50+ independent full service Commercial real estate firms throughout the US and Canada.

Daniela Troia

Retail Strategist

Daniela has 25 years in the foodservice industry, formerly executive chef and founder of Plantbar and Zia’s Café.
She has contributed her knowledge at both local and national health and wellness conferences, television programs, cookbooks. Some of her more prominent real estate consulting projects include the redesign of the Under Armour Brandhouse flagship store and the adaptive redevelopment of 1031 W. 36th St, an urban boutique apartment project in Baltimore’s trendy Hampden neighborhood.

Daniela’s roots in the food service industry run deep, having been born into a restaurant family. The earlier part of her career was spent running and eventually co-owning her family’s restaurant, Cafe Troia, in Towson, MD. There she honed the skills of operating all aspects of a fine dining Italian restaurant with recipes from her family’s long heritage in the restaurant business.

In 2005 Daniela founded Zia’s Café in Towson. Zia’s brought the Baltimore-Metro area a vibrant juice and smoothie bar paired with cafe fare, inspired by the latest in the health-conscious movement.

In 2014 Daniela opened the first of 4 Plantbar locations plus a food truck. Plantbar offered juice, adaptogenic smoothies and food, supportive of the gluten-free, vegan, raw & paleo lifestyles. Daniela’s passion for spreading access to a clean lifestyle evolved into Plantbar Pantry. These refrigerated “smart vending” machines utilize RFID inventory technology to bring Plantbar’ s full menu options into high traffic locations like hospitals, large employers and transit hubs.

During her tenure as an entrepreneur she negotiated many leases, oversaw 6 buildouts, foodtruck & smart vending. Made many mistakes along the way and is passionate about safeguarding her clients from what she learned along the way.

Community is important to Daniela. Her business was a longtime benefactor of the Believe Big Cancer Foundation and she served four years on the board of the Maryland Hospitality Education Foundation. In 2022 Daniela started the Meridian Chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation, organizing monthly meetups that platforms foodservice entrepreneurs, agricultural experts & health & wellness professionals in topics pertaining the best practice in food, farming & the healing arts. The group has been a gem for the Treasure Valley community to learn and support each other.

Daniela understands the lifecycle of a biz owner from preconception planning to site selection, lease negotiation, build out & launch to the less discussed pillars of biz operation including social media, software implementation & divestiture.

In her role as a retail strategist, she consults in both the food & wellness business.

Matthew Crofoot

Technology Development

Matthew has over 25 years’ experience as an entrepreneur and consultant partnering with small and medium sized businesses to build websites, databases and help solve their technology and business problems. He has a business degree from Boston University with majors in Information Systems and Marketing.